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Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Warren Morgan, Emma Daniels & The Spitting Incident That Never Was

The Lies that led to the Overturning of
Elections & the Suspension of Brighton & Hove Labour Party

One of Brighton, Hove and District Labour Party’s three AGM meetings on Saturday (Photograph:L @MichaelH14)

Momentum rally at Brighthelm Centre before AGM - hall is jam packed with nearly 200 outside unable to get in

Councillor Warren Morgan, Labour leader of Council, is certain that incident happened despite producing no an iota of proof. The arrogance of the man is demonstrated at the end - he is no Mr Morgan but Councillor Morgan. No doubt in time he will be rewarded with an even nobler title!

The real reason why Morgan invented a spitting incident - it was the only way to avoid what he termed 'an outright opponent' winning the election

Despite seeing nothing Warren Morgan is adamant that Kyle MP was abused and venue staff (note the plural) were spat on - of course Warren Morgan has a vested interest in there being such an incident

Morgan is 'saddened' that people question his lies - it is from 'people who were not there' but Morgan never claimed to actually witnessed anything - nonetheless he is in favour of expelling the person concerned

Warren Morgan's lies continue - 'several others have confirmed' yet there is no victim and no complaint and no witness names either. Nonetheless according to Morgan 'Someone was spat on' - a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie

Despite being contradicted and told his allegations were 'a complete lie' Warren Morgan says that 'unhappy security staff member' and CCTV footage will prove him right - problem is that they don't!

This is the story of how a false allegation of spitting at the Brighton & Hove Labour Party AGM was made into the pretext for shutting down the B&H party and cancelling the elections, in which 600 people had voted. Despite allegations stemming from Councillors Warren Morgan and Emma Daniels that there had been a spitting incident, no victim has been produced, no complaint has been made, no CCTV has been produced nor have the Police haven't been contacted - indeed there is no evidence whatsoever apart from the lies of Daniels and Warren Morgan that an incident took place, though even they can't bring themselves to say that they actually witnessed it.

Unsigned letter sent to Secretary suspending party and accepting allegations without investigation

But even if there had been a spitting incident. Suppose that one individual had behaved in such a manner, would that have been a reason to cancel an election in which 600 people took place? It is reason to deal with the person concerned but it is not a reason why 600 people should be penalised. Likewise the allegation of crowding, alleged safety concerns (though no one was hurt in any way) are just pretexts for Labour's Right-wing inability to accept a vote that goes against them.

The one serious incident that did take place hasn't merited any comment by Warren Morgan or fellow Council liar Emma Daniels, even though it was witnessed by Cllr. Julie Cattell

On Friday 8th July, Warren Morgan, leader of Brighton &
Hove Council and member of Progress, issued a panicked e-mail to a
closed circle of his friends and cronies.
Morgan complained of a ‘take-over
by a group of individuals from Momentum… and other fringe left-wing groups.’ Morgan warned that ‘Around 100 or so are signed up to attend a rally held just prior to the
AGM.’

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, who lives in Hove, has been vociferous in attacking an election which her friends lost - which is quite understandable from a member of the unelected House of Lords

Warren Morgan, who last summer supported the 4.5% candidate Liz Kendall
in the Labour leadership elections, showed just how out of touch he was. Some 800+ people attended a rally that was so
large that around 200 people couldn’t even get into the Brighthelm Centre.

Many of those at the rally made their way to the Labour Party AGM and
voted to oust the old incompetent Executive. An Executive so incompetent that despite
being warned that a hall holding 200 people wasn’t sufficiently large to hold
an AGM for the 6,000 members of Brighton and Hove Labour Party, went ahead and booked it anyway.

Emma Daniel states as fact that the caretaker was spat at - but complains that a newspaper is 'hassling' the original liar Warren Morgan for a comment

When confronted by the person who allegedly spat at a caretaker, Emma Daniels backs off saying 'I haven't accused you of anything' Daniels is happy to make allegations but slow to corroborate them

Daniels doesn't like being held accountable for her lies and demands that the person she was responsible for accusing of spitting stop tweeting her with 'no evidence' normally it is the accuser who should provide the evidence

Because of the good humour, sense and patience of people queuing to vote,
despite having had to wait over an hour in many cases, the meeting went
on smoothly despite people having to vote at 3 separate hustings.

Up to her neck in it - Emma Daniels asks why a security guard would lie to her when the obvious question is why was she lying

Some people, in particular Peter Kyle MP and Warren Morgan and hangers on
like Emma Daniels were anything but happy.Indeed they were furious.They
had spent their lives fighting the Left.They felt comfortable in their existing relationships with the Tories on
the Council, with whom they have few real political differences.The enemy within, socialists, had captured
the Party that had given them so much.

An orderly queue forms outside City College

long but orderly queues - people determined to vote - perhaps they will expel 200 people to get the right result next time?

Together with dinosaurs and fossils such as his nobleness Baron Steven Bassam of Brighton
and her ladyship Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (though she doesn’t live there!)
the basis of a plan took shape. The idea
was to emphasise the chaos of the meeting and then to inflate what was
apparently a minor difference of opinion over a locked door into a major
spitting incident. By her own admission,
Emma Daniels – member of the racist Zionist Labour Movement and an arch
Blairite – was the first to create a storm out of a mill pool.

Nicky Eason, a member of the previous Executive, who was voted out by the largest majority of all, takes the allegation of spitting as fact although she must have known it was a fabrication

The scene was thus set for an approach to staff in Labour HQ. Despite Corbyn winning the leadership he hasn’t
taken control of the civil service which has been running a slow burning witch
hunt in the past few months via the Stalinist named Control Unit. Closing down a dissident Labour Party is bread and butter to these people.

Warren Morgan issued a Press Statement on the Monday July 11th stating that

'I am sorry to hear that our local MP was subject to abuse by some of those attending, and that a member of venue staff unconnected with the meeting was spat on. This is not behaviour we should tolerate in local politics or our city, and I expect the new Executive officers to identify and expel the individual concerned swiftly.'

Note how the 'spitting incident' is a fact and how Peter Kyle has also been made the subject of abuse, though Warren Morgan doesn't tell us what this abuse consists of. Warren Morgan, of course, was in no position to know whether there had been any spitting since he hadn't himself witnessed this alleged incident.

With the aid of the NEC’s Disputes panel, Morgan and co. secured a decision to void the result of democratic elections and to reinstate the old Executive Committee.An unsigned letter from Labour Party HQ to the new Secretary, Greg Hadfield, spoke of ‘reports from the ballot results were not properly reached.’ It is clear that the email was drawn up in a
hurry, in response to a complaint against Warren Morgan.What does it mean that ‘the ballot results
were not properly reached.’ apart from the fact that the right result was not reached? This is
bureaucratic gobbledydook.No one has
alleged people voted who weren’t entitled to or that there was fraud or
malpractice in the counting thereof.It
is clear that the purpose of the letter was to cast aspersions whilst providing
no evidential basis for their decision.

Matt Tully, the accused, in front of City College

This letter from LP HQ is quite amazing. It
talks of ‘the safety of members at the meeting was compromised’ – which was the
reason why there was a minor disagreement with a caretaker, not a security
guard. The reason for the overcrowding and the safety concerns was that
the old Executive had booked a room far too small for those attending. So what do the witch hunters of Labour’s
Disputes Panel do? They put the same useless Executive back in charge!

The NEC letter doesn’t even pretend to investigate the matter. On the basis of Warren Morgan’s organised
complaints they shut down the party, suspending it, banning meetings and
reinstating the old Executive. The final
line ‘I hope that the Party will return to comradely conduct’ seems like a sick
joke. It is the uncomradeliness of the
complainants and their willing stooges at Labour Party HQ which is the
problem, not the behaviour of members.

Emma Daniels spoke of the spitting incident as a fact ‘Wow the member yesterday who spat at the
security guard (on CCTV) is demanding an apology for smears’. She neither saw the alleged incident nor did
she see any CCTV. She complained that
the Morning Star, which carried a story detailing how a member, Matt Tully, had been falsely accused of spitting, was ‘hassling Warren’ about it, i.e. trying to get a quote from
Morgan. Presumably Daniels thought that
Morgan should have been free to make false allegations without being questioned on them. Ms Daniels
nonetheless had the audacity to proclaim
that “It’s
best just to let people run an investigation properly.” Clearly she didn't need any investigation to make up her own mind.

Despite having stated that the spitting incident was a fact, Councillor Daniel said: “I think Greg has compromised the investigation by getting involved.” Presumably her own involvement didn't compromise anything.

Matt Tully has since made a complaint about the spitting incidentto Iain McNicol, Labour's General Secretary, though it is highly unlikely that McNicol, who is the eminent grise behind the suspensions, will carry out any investigation.

It’s not surprising that the Morning Star tried to obtain a comment
from Warren Morgan since he had stated, in a comment on an article in Brighton &
Hove that ‘The incident happened. I’ve spoke to 3 Party members who spoke to
the staff member who was spat on. CCTV
is likely to have captured it.’We
haven’t of course been told the names of the 3 members, though we can guess.

The ‘spitting incident’ was clearly concocted out of nothing between
Daniels, Kyle and Morgan. Cllr. Daniel
Yates, another member of the Progress tribe, also contributed his pennyworth
asking Matt Tully ‘how did they identify you if you
did not spit at him? Was he just
mistaken.’

There is just one problem with all of this. No complaint was made by the person, a member
of the City College staff, who had allegedly been spat at. There was no victim and therefore no
CCTV. One would have expected the City
College authorities to have complained in the strongest manner if one of their
staff members had been abused and spat at by someone attending the Labour Party
AGM. Yet when asked for a comment, City
College issued a statement saying that ‘We
have no comment to make about any alleged incidents concerning our staff.’ That is it.
It doesn’t even accept there was an incident. There is no mention of CCTV. The inference is clear. There is no evidence because there was no
incident.

Warren Morgan, Peter Kyle and Emma Daniels between them manufactured an
incident out of nothing. Why? Because they couldn’t accept the fact that
their favoured candidates had overwhelmingly been defeated by a vote of the
membership which wanted change. Like any
aspiring South American dictator they sought to annul the vote that delivered,
for them, the wrong results.

And having failed to win the vote they are now seeking to engage in a
McCarthyist witch hunt against the new Chair Mark Sandell and Phil Clarke, a
new Executive member and Secretary of Brighton and Hove Trades Council and a
member of the NUT Executive. Whilst
ex-Tories and ex-UKIPPERS are welcomed into the Party, socialists are
distinctly unwelcome to the Tory Progress Party that Daniels, Morgan and Kyle
are signed up to.

But if Daniels, Kyle and Morgan are eager to invent incidents that didn’t
happen, they are doing their best not to condemn a very real incident that did
happen. After speaking to the Momentum
meeting, Seema Chandwani and Michael Calderbank were accosted in a pub by two thugs, including an acolyte of Morgan and
threatened with violence. They faced ‘physical
threats, swearing and aggression’ from 2 friends of Morgan and Daniel. Present were 2 Labour councillors including
Julie Cattell, the far-Right councillor from Preston Ward. A full description of what took place was
covered in an article in the Morning Star of July 11th.

Below is a statement by the person accused of spitting, Matt Tully and you can access copies of all relevant material into the gerrymandering and subversion of Brighton Labour Party democracy here.

Mr
Tully has complained to City
College about the caretaker and to the Labour Party after the accusation
was tweeted by, among others, council leader Warren Morgan.

He
said that he had not ruled out legal action – such as a claim for defamation of
character – adding: “It is my intention to pursue this and I will consider my
options. I just want to do things in the correct way.”

He
asked Councillor Morgan to retract the allegation on Twitter, identifying
himself as the person accused of spitting. He said: “I identified myself (on
Twitter) because I wanted the rumours and false allegations to stop.”

Matt Tully

Councillor
Emma Daniel said that she had spoken to the caretaker at the meeting. She said
that he told her that when he went to shut the doors “one guy was pretty
horrible and spat on the floor in front of me”.

Councillor
Daniel said that she reported the claim to party staff and executive members
and said that she had “no idea who the person was” until he identified himself
on Twitter.

She
added: “It’s best just to let people run an investigation properly.”

Since
the AGM the local party has been suspended by Labour’s National Executive
Committee (NEC) after “many complaints and reports of concern”.

An
email, reporting the suspension of the local party, said: “These allege abusive
behaviour by some attendees as well as reports that the ballot results were not
properly reached.”

The
election of a new executive committee – predominantly supporters of Jeremy
Corbyn – at the AGM has been declared void.

The
old executive committee remains in office until a new AGM and election in the
autumn after Mr Corbyn learns whether he will be replaced as Labour leader.

The
local party was suspended on Thursday (14 July) and yesterday (Sunday 17 July)
Baroness Maggie Jones, who lives in Hove, spoke out on the Sunday Politics
South East on BBC One.

She
said the AGM “was a badly organised meeting”, adding that she “did witness one
of the officials being very upset because he had to deal with a spitting
incident”.

She
also said that there were “entryists” at the meeting, indicating that they
included those elected to the executive committee at the AGM.

One
of them, Mark Sandell, who was elected to chair the local party, denied the
claim on the same edition of the Sunday Politics.

Another,
Phil Clarke, said that he had stood against Labour in previous elections and
that this was known when he joined the party.

Like
all the candidates, he said, his name and candidacy was published eight days
before the AGM, adding: “No complaints were raised and nobody took issue with
me standing.”

He
said that the real reason that the local party had been suspended was because
the NEC “did not like Jeremy Corbyn supporters being elected at a fabulous and
well-organised meeting attended by more than 600 members”.

But
Mr Tully, in his formal complaint to Labour Party general secretary Iain
McNicol, said that Councillor Morgan had subverted natural justice through his
involvement.

He
alleged that the council leader had “brought the party into disrepute” by
alleging that staff at City College were spat on, adding: “These irresponsible
allegations, which were quickly rebutted by others present, were nevertheless
repeated without any concern for natural justice or the complaints procedures
of the Labour Party.

“At
least three other members of Councillor Morgan’s Labour group (of councillors)
repeated the allegations, assumed them to be true and ignored my protestations
of innocence.”

Sussex
Police said that no complaint had been received of spitting at the meeting
while City College has received a complaint – but from Mr Tully, not about him.

Having
been identified while in the meeting and concerned to clear his name, Mr Tully
added that Councillor Morgan’s allegations had “caused me immense distress”.

Labour’s
national executive committee (NEC) suspended the local party on Thursday (July
14), following the local branch’s AGM meeting the previous Saturday (July 8) at
City College, where Jeremy Corbyn supporters were elected to the executive
committee. The results have since been annulled.

Matt
Tully said the spitting allegations are false

The
NEC said the reasons
for the suspension included alleged ‘abusive behaviour’, concerns that ‘the
ballots were not properly reached’, and safety, due to overcapacity. The
meeting was held in three parts for capacity reasons, as more than 600 Labour
members turned up to vote.

Matt
Tully said he was involved in the incident where spitting was alleged – but
said no spitting occurred.

In
a statement giving his side of the story on the AGM, Mr Tully explained that he
was told that when he arrived at Labour’s AGM at 3.40pm, he and others were
told by a staff member at City College that ‘they could not come in and that
the building was at capacity’.

Mr
Tully said he asked the staff member how he was going to vote at the AGM, but
the man’s response was ‘You can’t’.

“I
then walked past him and joined the queue in the foyer,” Mr Tully said.

“I
waited in the queue for about 10 minutes. And then I noticed the main
doors — which provide the main entrance and/or exit to the building — had been
locked.

“Both
sets of doors were locked to prevent people entering the building. Which
obviously prevents people leaving too.

“From
the inside, I told the caretaker that it was dangerous to lock the doors and
that it was a health and safety risk. He shouted back, through a small gap in
the doors — which could not be moved — that now I was in I had to stay in and
could not come back out. He was communicating with someone before this exchange
via a communications device.

“Quite
quickly, a security guard appeared. He asked me what the problem was and I
explained that locking the main doors to the building was far more dangerous
than letting more people in.

“He
agreed and told the caretaker to open the doors.

“At
this point, there was no mention — or accusation — of spitting.”

That
didn’t come until later, when the AGM had started.

Mr
Tully said: “Shortly after the chair started talking for the second round of
the AGM, someone on with a Labour Party staff t-shirt approached me and asked
me to leave the room so he could talk to me.

“At
this point, the Labour Party staff member said I had spat in the face of the
caretaker and that they had it on CCTV.

“I
said that was impossible. He asked for my name. Which I gave him. He then told
me he was going to report me and I would be kicked out of the Labour Party.

“I
asked him why. To which he told me again I had spat in the face of the
caretaker.

“I
then asked him if he’d seen the CCTV and he said he hadn’t.

“I
asked him how he knew I had spat in the face of the caretaker. To which he
replied, he didn’t.

“Very
quickly and anxiously, the Labour Party staff member backed down and told me he
never said I had done it nor that I was guilty. I agreed that he never said I
was guilty. But, when he approached me originally, he did present it as
fact — rather than accusation.

“He
said sorry and said he didn’t mean it to come across that way.”

Mr
Tully said as he missed the vote, he then sat in on the third round of the AGM
and voted.

It
was not until after the meeting that the spitting allegations resurfaced on
social media, and less than a week later the local branch was suspended.

Statement from City College authorities - no comment on 'alleged incident'

A
statement from City College said: “City College Brighton and Hove can confirm
that the Brighton, Hove and District Labour Party hired our main hall on
Central Campus, Pelham Street for their Annual General Meeting (AGM) on
Saturday, July 9. We have no comment to make about any alleged incidents
concerning our staff.”

A
Labour spokesperson said:

“We don’t comment on on-going investigations.

“No
abuse of any kind by Labour Party members or supporters is tolerated. Any
complaints of bullying or intimidation and allegations of misconduct are always
taken very seriously.

“We
would encourage anyone who has been the subject of threats to inform the party
and contact the police.”